Joe Dowd: Searching for the best 49-cent pen ever

You made it into college and had a job and you wanted to buy your own Bic Clic to start school. It was so advanced, so slick compared with the 19-cent Bic “Cristals” leaking ink into pockets since the 1950s.

So you put two quarters together and buy one of your own. For once, your mom doesn’t have to buy it for you. You’re acting like an adult; your purchase buys a half-buck worth of freedom.

It was the best pen in the world for the money: a retractable, clickable ballpoint pen encased in the space-age pastels of the mid-century. It fit perfectly in one’s hand and seemed to write forever. You never remember them running out of ink. You’d lose them long before that happened. Who knew they’d matter so much later on.

You grow up and have children of your own. You take the firstborn to the store before her first day of school to buy her a Bic Clic, because she should have the best pen in the world for the money. And the world had changed. Bic didn’t make them anymore. You wonder where you’ve been all these years that you hadn’t even noticed until now.

You call the corporate headquarters in Connecticut and find out Bic sells them in packages of 300, for about a buck a piece, with corporate logos printed on their side. You ask the corporate spokeswoman, “Why? I just want a few.”

She offers no real response.

So your younger daughter knows the story of how you took the older daughter for a Bic Clic and there were none.

And she goes on eBay and finds a collection of vintage Bic Clics and buys them for her old man at Christmas.

And you treasure them, because now the 49-cent pen is priceless.

And you take the green one to the racetrack and you start a winning streak that lasts all spring. And one day you take the white one and you lose 70 bucks and you think it’s not a coincidence.

Every week you hold a story meeting. And there’s a box in the conference room. Your staff goes through the box and finds notebooks, and they’re thrilled because reporters love cool notebooks. They open another box, and it’s filled with pens.

And a colleague holds one up and you shout – right out loud in the news meeting – “That’s a Bic Clic!” And your staff looks at you as if you’ve gone mad but you exclaim it again:

“That’s a Bic Clic!”

The box was filled with hundreds of them, “merch” passed to us to pass along to clients and sources. They were blue, emblazoned with “Oscar,” a fine national healthcare provider that paid about $300 to have its name painted on the side of 300 of the greatest 49-cent pens ever made.

It was like Christmas again. Your little girls, now grown, are getting their own supply.

You take a small stash for yourself. You hold one and know it’s mightier than the sword.